If music plays an instrumental part in your kid’s life, check out these gift ideas from Plan Toys Musical range.

Solid Drum in action:

Musical Band Set in action:

View the Plan Toys range here…

Up until now it has been  hard to find the perfect kids plate. These new personalised plates are not only  modern and fun (no cartoon characters here!) , but it lets them know which is theirs and helps them with name recognition. These new plates are safe for the kiddies as they are made from melamine and are BPA free. They’re also a great size  (10”) which is much more generous than the standard kids plate. The only catch is that there’s a 4 week turnaround time, so one must be quick to make it in time for Santa’s sleigh.. Check out the full range here.

Its been a fun few weeks for our three bebe Handmade to Retail Trade winners as they finalise their creations in preparation for the retail market . The first of our winners are NSW company - i found love. Here at bebe we have fallen in love with their beautiful mobiles, so much so that our resident merchandiser featured them in the window the day they arrived. We can’t wait to see what else this creative pair has up their sleeves.

Meet the founders of i found love:

Sonya:

my personal style-

I try to surround myself with things that I love and have collected over the years.  Our house is full of music, art and books to hopefully inspire. I have tried to create a home that is beautiful yet comfortable ,one which is full of life and has the space for our children to  dream. I love Danish design at the moment with its philosophy of simple abundance and it’s link to nature. I love the consideration of the raw materials that go into a product. I find style inspiration from classic movies and magazines and love to have fun with both interiors and clothing. I like the idea of reinventing oneself with a new outfit and love how clothes can change the way you feel on any day.

things I can’t live without

Family, music, films, and books. Things that I like and that make me feel creative…the ocean, photographs, cookbooks-especially Nigella Lawson, my Skeppshult bicycle, markets, fireworks, colouring pencils, white winters, rainy days and fresh flowers.

in 10 years time I would love

to have a little more time to do the things that I enjoy like cooking, would love to be a much better photographer, be ploughing my way through our recently planted vege patch, and to have taken my children on a wonderful trip to some special locations around the world.

Rachel

My personal style-

I am inspired by the Swedish artist Carl Larsson’s depiction of a lively, creative family set against the exquisite lightness and lustre of his wife Karin’s decorating style. Our home is decorated with a mix of great practicality and great whimsy. The furniture, pictures and ornaments are an eclectic mix of glorious op shop treasures, family antiques and modern pieces. My wish for the children is an understanding and value of their ‘roots’. Living with pieces that were loved and treasured by previous generations of our family is a tangible way of achieving this.

I appreciate clothes that are made of pure materials, without synthetics. I adore my children in clothes that are full of innocence, celebrate childhood and that are label free…that is to say, my children are not providing free advertising on their shirt for a manufacturing company.

Since the age of 14 I have been addicted to the thrill of hunting at op shops and the quickening of the senses when a treasure is un-earthed. I am now sharing the fun with Rory and Araminta who have taken to it like ducks to water!

things I can’t live without

a sense of the eternal, my family, my library of read and re-read favourite books, my child-hood book collection of Milly Molly Mandy, Mumfie, The Bullerby Children, Lotta, The Moominpapas, Noel Streatfield, Little House on the Prairie and Drina series, natural, honest surfaces, my mulberry tree, old friends and the easy understanding of many adventures and heartaches shared with them.

in 10 years time I would love

to have finished renovating our 100 year old home, and to have returned to Nick’s birth place in the UK and mine in Papua New Guinea with our children.

Still intrigued? Read more about how i found love came to be….

We met when Rachel’s husband Nick began teaching Sonya’s son Rory and realised our boys shared a name. Friendships can be founded on such simple premises.

Between us we have eight children. Sonya and her husband Michael have Rory, Millicent, Adelaide, Ewen and Portia. And Rachel and Nick have Rory, Araminta and Calliope.

We both live in Dubbo in the central west of New South Wales and enjoy modern country living based around a fantastic seasonal lifestyle. We both feel incredibly lucky to have amazing regional produce at our fingertips and wide open spaces for the children to adventure in. When we feel in need of a touch of sophistication and a good coffee we move our work meetings to the long table at Pete’s ‘Newtown Providore’s’ deli.

We have only in the last few months set up our company i found love. This was inspired in part by winning the Alimrose design competition with our Eskimo/Mikki dolls. Prior to this we had simply enjoyed the pleasure of dreaming up creations and making them for friends and family.

Sonya has recently finished designing and overseeing the building of their new family home, and is enjoying putting in a series of vegetable plots and  an orchard.

After the birth Of Calliope, Rachel finished her work as CEO of Anglicare Western NSW and is now enjoying the privilege of mentoring a group of fantastic Christian girls with her friend Shobana.

We were drawn to Bebe’s Handmade Challenge by its appreciation of the personal investment in a hand-made Australian product with a modern edge. In addition, the value of winning business mentoring from such a reputable and wonderful company as Bebe was too enticing to ignore! We are most grateful for this opportunity entrusted to us and are enjoying the adventure.

I found love’s iconic newspaper print boats and silhouette mobiles have a nostalgic appeal and their simplicity is enhanced by the use of pure cottons and linens.

The Boats mobile depicts boats bobbing in a harbour and the newspaper print fabric draws on childhood memories of sailing paper boats. We thought it was charming to re-invent an old classic in a modern fresh way. We both feel a love for the magic of childhood and the value of the past. Orders are packaged in traditional brown boxes, with brown string, hand stamped and finished with a photograph.

We envision i found love’s range broadening over the next few years to include a range of cloth dolls and timber products finished in wax.

Check out i found love’s winning creations here online. Further pieces are also available in the Butterfly range in our Melboune store.

Bugaboo enthusiasts can now customise their Bugaboo stroller with their child’s name thanks to US company American Terry. Available in a range of colours and of course your  little one’s name, this will ensure your stroller stands out from the crowd.  We’re still waiting for the day Bugaboo commissions a range of strollers to create deigner toppings for this world popular pram. We’ve seen Paul Frank and Marc Jacobs versions.. who will be next..?

We’re pretty confident this new 3-in-1 bike from Wishbone is going to be one of our hot Christmas items this year. Unlike any other running bike, the Wishbone Bike evolves with a child’s different stages pf development, making it the ultimate pre-bike. Check out the Wishbone Bike here…  

I popped into the Pregnancy & Babies Expo here in Melbourne over the weekend and caught up with the lovely Robbie McGregor. We had a good chat about Bloom’s overwhelming success in the overseas market, including their latest release - the Bloom Luxo Cot.  Now I have to be honest, when I first saw the  Luxo at the Kind & Jugend trade fair in Germany I thought it was great, but the colour (a mix of walnut and white) wasn’t quite my cup of tea. Since then they have added full white to the colllection (shown above), and I must say - I like!

Keep an eye out here for the Bloom Luxo Cot - due to arrive in the next couple of weeks both online and in store.

Target has agreed to pay a $600,000 civil penalty for importing and selling a variety of toys with high levels of lead paint on the surface…The Consumer Product Safety Commission alleged that Target knowingly imported and sold the illegal Chinese-made toys between May 2006 and August 2007.
(AP, 2009, October 1, par.1,4)

Target recalled more than 500,000 Kool Toyz play sets, Anima Bamboo Collection games, and Happy Giddy gardening tools and Sunny Patch chairs for lead paint violations between November 2006 and September 2007.
(AP, 2009, October 1, par.5)

…Target denies that it knowingly broke the law. The agency says the Target settlement makes fiscal year 2009 a record for both number of civil penalties, 39, and dollar value of fines imposed, approximately $9.8 million.
(AP, 2009, October 1, par.7-8)

“This penalty should remind importers and retailers that they have always had the same obligation to meet the strict lead limits as the manufacturers,” CPSC Chair Inez Tenenbaum said in a statement.
(AP, 2009, October 1, par.9)

via cnbc.com

It seems we have gotten a little slack with our “Window Spotting” efforts since we moved back into our re-furbished store back in (ahem….) January. While these photos arent optimal when it comes to lighting and suffer from sun glare, they do show you that yes we do take pride in our windows. Resident Merchandiser Michelle is in fact the mastermind behind our fab  window displays and with three windows to update at a tome, she is kept very busy! The “hardware ” components you see above are the In Your Room toybox, Bloom Nano High Chair , Oeuf Classic Cot and Stokke Tripp Trapp High Chair. The feature of the window below is the Kid’s Earth Globes which have just arrived back into stock for Christmas (yahoo!). Stay tuned for more windiw spotting soon…..and we’ll introduce you to Michelle soon too

I thought I’d share this family shot taken last week in sunny San Francisco.  We were suprised by how miles the Stokke Xplory stroller clocked up in that it was our five year old Liam doing all the cruising, whle Harper (shown right) travelled nice & close in the Ergo Sport. It did make it much easier navigating through the city knowing both kiddies were safely restrained (so to speak!).

I recall feeling a tad self conscious after taking this snap as I looked up to find a stream of downtown office workers diverting their  path off the sidewalk and on to the road to acccomodate the capture of our family moment. I asked my Dad  (shown left) who is a local  ”Do we look like tourists, Dad?’ . His response as he watched  me zip up my camera and sling it around my neck was frank, yet gentle”I would say, yes”.

I came across these Modern Cabana cubby houses whilst in San Francisco last week  and just had to share! They fit the bill for functionality with their playful colours, chalkboard surfaces, fold down table and tri fold doors, and are eco- friendly as they are made from FSC certified wood and non toxic paint.

At US$1500, Bebe wont be stocking this little find (the shipping to Australia would be that amount again!) but we do challenge any handy folk to pop on down to Bunnings and have a stab at creating one themselves. If you’ve built your own modern cubby, we’d love you to share it so we can share it with others here on the blog as potential inspiration for a handy summer project. Check out the Modern Cabana cubby houses here…